He sat down on the edge of one of the twin beds and let out a ragged breath. He glanced over at Bryce, who didn’t look that much better. “You don’t know how well off you are. I wish I could spend my days sitting beside a river watching the salmon avoiding my hook.”

“Retirement’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” Bryce grunted. He sat down on the other bed.

“I take it that things weren’t easy with the cops this time?” I said.

Walter grunted. “There are complaints running all up and down the spout. The chief’s threatening to take this all the way to the governor, to congress if need be. Do you think there’s a chance you can keep things a little lower key in the future?” He looked at me, Rink and Harvey in turn.

I spoke for the three of us. “Not a chance, Walt.”

He shook his head, laughing softly. It had been a pointless request anyway. I wasn’t the only one who had the feeling that things could get much worse. “I can’t blame you guys, I suppose. It wasn’t you who went in and shot up that place with machine pistols. It took a lot of convincing the chief, though. He said they wouldn’t have shot the damn place to pieces if you guys hadn’t been in there in the first place.”

“He has a point,” I said.

“You probably saved a lot of people in there.”

“Doesn’t make me feel any better.” People had died: a terrified guy under a table, the young girl hiding behind the cashier’s desk, among others. Their deaths weighed heavily on my soul, regardless of how many others I might have saved. Seemed my life was destined to be filled with collateral damage, something that would never sit well with me.

Walter waved me down, then searched his pockets for his cigar. He thumbed the cigar into his mouth and sat staring into space.

“Haven’t you anything else for us?” I asked.

“Only something very strange.”

I shared a glance with Rink.

Walter shook himself. “There was another murder across town from where your gunfight took place. Someone was butchered with a knife.”

We were in a huge city with its fair share of crime. Knife crime wasn’t so unfamiliar in Miami—just like anywhere else—but Walter was right: it was too much of a coincidence to be unrelated. Once again I wondered about what had become of Alisha Rickard.

“Elderly male,” Walter began, allaying my first fears. But his next words put me right back in the same place again. “Knifed to death in the ladies’ restroom. Rickard’s fingerprints were at the scene.”

“What about his wife?”

“No sign. Only her shoes were found. It looks like she might’ve crawled out of a window.”